Alex Berenson in NYT;

“We have treated a whistle-blower like a traitor — and thus made him a traitor. Great job!”

“What Mr. Snowden at first seemed to want — and rightly — was to force our electronic spies to answer, in plain English, are you saving e-mails, Skype and other Internet communications? What about phone calls? For how long? Who can get access to this data, and is a warrant required in each case? How are calls between Americans treated? Et cetera. Despite many promises of disclosure from the White House, the answers to all those questions remain murky”.

“So Mr. Snowden seemed to have done the world a service. But in the last week both he and his former employers have misplayed their hands, and his story has become far trickier. Mr. Snowden did not start out as a spy, and calling him one bends the term past recognition. Spies don’t give their secrets to journalists for free.”

“Mr. Snowden has put himself in a terrible spot. Moscow will surely protect him for as long as it feels like irritating Washington. But by the time the Russians are finished sifting through his laptops, he’ll be their spy, whether or not he meant to be. Beijing may have already pulled the same trick; some intelligence officers believe that Chinese spy agencies copied Mr. Snowden’s hard drives during his Hong Kong stay.”

“We have treated a whistle-blower like a traitor — and thus made him a traitor. Great job. Did anyone in the White House or the N.S.A or the C.I.A. consider flying to Hong Kong and treating Mr. Snowden like a human being, offering him a chance to testify before Congress and a fair trial? Maybe he would have gone with President Vladimir V. Putin anyway, but at least he would have had another option. The secret keepers would have won too: a Congressional hearing would have been a small price to bring Mr. Snowden and those precious hard drives back to American soil.” Click link for full article;

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/opinion/snowden-through-the-eyes-of-a-spy-novelist.html?hp

( Posted By F. Sheikh)